Wednesday, April 18, 2012

“It’s nothing to do with him personally. But you can’t change the rules because you like a certain person. Then you have no rules,” said New Jersey lawyer Mario Apuzzo.

Forget about the alleged Photoshopped birth certificates; the activists are not challenging whether Rubio was born in Miami. Rather, they say Rubio is ineligible under Article 2 of the Constitution which says “no person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The rub is that “natural born citizen” was never defined.

The birthers rely on writings at the time of the formation of the republic and references in court cases since then to contend that “natural born” means a person born to U.S. citizens. Rubio was born in 1971 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, his office said, but his parents did not become citizens until 1975.

“Marco Rubio was born a Cuban citizen via his parents,” screams a headline on a blog by birther Charles Kerchner, who obtained copies of the naturalization petitions by Rubio’s parents in May, igniting talk that is spreading across the Web.

Kerchner said Rubio is no different from Obama, who even though he was born in Hawaii (which he doubts), was not born to two U.S. citizens. Obama’s father was a Kenyan national. The birthers say Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose parents are from India and were not citizens at the time of his birth, is also unqualified. [...]

“The arguments aren’t crazy,” said Georgetown law professor Lawrence Solum, an expert in constitutional theory. But, he added, “the much stronger argument suggests that if you were born on American soil that you would be considered a natural born citizen.” Keep on reading...